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Ahimsa is a comprehensive principle. We are helpless mortals caught in
the conflagration of himsa. The saying that life lives on life has a
deep meaning in it. Man cannot for a moment live without consciously or
unconsciously committing outward himsa. The very fact of his living -
eating, drinking and moving about - necessarily involves some himsa,
destruction of life, be it ever so minute. A votary of ahimsa therefore
remains true to his faith if the spring of all his actions is
compassion, if he shuns to the best of his ability the destruction of
the tiniest creature, tries to save it, and thus incessantly strives to
be free from the deadly coil of himsa. He will be constantly growing in
self-restraint and compassion, but he can never become entirely free
from outward himsa.

Then again, because underlying ahimsa is the
unity of all life, the error of one cannot but affect all, and hence man
cannot be wholly free from himsa. So long as he continues to b…

A long time ago, in T'ang China, there was an old monk who embarked on a pilgrimage
to Mount Wu-t'ai, the abode of Manjusri, the Bodhisattva of Wisdom.

Aged
and weak, he was treading the long dusty road alone, seeking alms along
the way. After many long months, one morning he gazed upward and saw the
majestic mountain in the distance. By the roadside, there was an old woman
working the field.
"Please tell me," he asked, "how much longer I must
proceed before reaching Mount Wu-t'ai?"
The woman just looked at him, uttered
a guttural sound and returned to her hoeing.
He repeated the question a
second and third time, but still there was no answer.
Thinking that the woman must be deaf, he decided to push on. After he
had taken a few dozen steps, he heard the woman call out to him,
"Two more
days, it will take you two more days."
Somewhat annoyed, the monk responded,
"I thought you were deaf. Why didn't you answer my question earlier?…

For a table to exist,
we need wood, a carpenter, time, skillfulness, and many other causes.
And each of these causes needs other causes to be. The wood needs the
forest, the sunshine, the rain, and so on. The carpenter needs his
parents, breakfast, fresh air, and so on. And each of those things, in
turn, has to be brought about by other causes and conditions. If we
continue to look in this way, we’ll see that nothing has been left out.
Everything in the cosmos has come together to bring us this table.
Looking deeply at the sunshine, the leaves of the tree, and the clouds,
we can see the table. The one can be seen in the all, and the all can be
seen in the one. - Thich Nhat Hanh in The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching The venerable Thich Nhat Hanh